CFH I think maybe you misunderstood my original statement. I'm not a very PC person so you will have to forgive me if I come off a little rough around the edges. I meant that as long radical islamists are volunteering and funding international terrorist orginizations my government will send me to defeat them. So I will continue to find myself on the other side of a firefight against muslims.

I have mixed feelings on whether the current type of government in Iraq can work. I was impressed with the Sunnis I worked with. They were typically well educated, hardworking, more open to western culture and government and well organized. The Shia due to 70+ years of having a boot on their neck are quite often poor and uneducated. But more importantly they are not organized. They spend just as much time with infighting as anything else. With the Sunnis now having a bigger role politcally we will just have to wait and see if the two can get along. The Kurds are really the biggest obstacle to a united Iraq. If they cannot be appeased and afforded some semblance of autonomy they will declare independence. With large swaths of both Turkey and Iran having Kurdish majorities this would instantly bring about tension and possibily military action. A resurgence of sectarian violence between Sunnia and Shia would pit a Iranian supported Shia majority against a Gulf State funded Sunni minority. We can blaim the cultural differences in Iraq and Afghanistan on the Brits though they drew the lines Anyhow I digress...regardless of why or how we ended up in Iraq, the potential for disaster with a too speedy withdrawal compared with the possibilty of a democratic non fundamentalist nation smack dab in the middle of an area that is still coming to grips with the western world seems a no brainer to me